Dartmouth Regatta

This year was the 180th year of this annual celebration where, for a few days, the town descends into a madness of noise and stalls and food and competitions and what not.

Traffic gets re-arranged and flows in all sorts of unusual directions; car parks become fair grounds; and, dog walking spaces become car parks. You can see from my description that I am not a nautical person as I would have written it differently. Rowing and sailing and kon-tiki raft races, competitions and such like, team work and so on.

There was a slight change this year apparently due to the bank holiday falling on the penultimate weekend of August. This meant that the festivities and the madness started with a family fun weekend on Saturday 29th August and ran until the firework finale on Saturday 30th with an opening ceremony (for the Regatta itself) on the evening of Wednesday 27th.

The first stalls to go up were the food and drink for the family weekend and this Greek Souvlaki stall was possibly the best presented. What's more, the display stayed as clean and fresh on each day as it did on the first. It was a shame to see the souvlaki bulked up with chips but I guess that we live in a supersized world these days and if it's what the consumer wants (which they clearly did as it was very popular)...

Of course it would be wrong to write about the regatta without making reference to the background. The first recorded regatta was held in 1822. In historical context, that was just over a year after Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena. The event recorded included a rowing race for six-oared gigs. There was also a ball held in the evening for one hunderd and twenty persons. It wasn't until 1856 that it became the Royal Regatta when Queen Victoria made an emergency stop over in the port due to bad weather and bestowed the title before she departed.

There was a lot of activity on an already busy river this past week which commenced I believe with the six-oared gigs pictured here and ended with the tug of war between whalers in the boat float in what was probably the wettest day of the festival.

Night time provided an interesting mix of noise and serenity depending on what was playing in the Royal Avenue Gardens and on what hour of the day or night that it was.

And who was it that parked their VW Beetle on the pavement when all other cars had gone?

Early mornings were quiet except for the seagulls who it has to be said, kept a pretty low profile during the day time.

One can only assume that it was the sheer number of humans wandering about the

gardens and the waterfront that pushed them out of their preferred foraging sites until the early hours of the morning. That was of course dog walking time, always a quiet period of the day (well usually) and one where it is actually to find a little peace and tranquility.

Of course there is the canine omnipresent expectation of a free lunch and so walking Gandalf this week has been its own tug of war between the two of us over whether he could forage.

It was a battle that was in his interest to lose, having rescued him a week or so before from a couple of large fishing hooks where he had managed to sniff out and half eat an old bit of bait that was lying about fully armed. He must have been worried himself as he whimpered and allowed me to remove food and fish hooks from between his teeth without even a growl.

Dog walking was a particular problem duing the week culminating in the regatta proper where the press of people (some with two or three dogs apiece) on Thursday and Friday in particular was quite excessive. On these days, preferred dog walks tended to be through the backstreets to Ford and then back again the other side (South Ford) where, as is evidenced in the image, there are bananas growing. Can you beleive it, bananas growing outside in the UK. Well, in Dartmouth in particular.

All in all, the regatta experience was a positive one. There were some interesting spots. Like when a spice merchant tried to sell me chutney and sauces at £9.50 a pot and where I am convinced that the shreds of turmeric in the "concoction" ( his word) were actually carrot.

Or missing the point that when the sign says "Car Park Closed" that it really does include those individuals who have an electric moped parked there. We only spotted our error a couple of days later by which time the solitry vehicle had been incorporated into the fairground equipment. And it was still there when the council sweepers were cleaning up a magically empty car park (other than a bike!) that up until late the night before had been a heaving fairground.

Of course the big finale is the firework display held on the Saturday. It rained for most of the day and that proved a bit of a washout for the various traders. But on a positive side, the weather had otherwise been good all week. Whether the display was in any risk of cancellation was anyone's guess but the rain stopped when predicted and the sun came out in time to go down, when predicted. We took oursleves to a vantage point up Crowthers Hill to get a view of them rather than staying in the centre of town. It was an impressive view and the image doesn't do justice to the display. Nor, it has to be said, did the formulaic "oohs" and "aahs" that were being muttered in the general vicinity and giving the whole experience a kind of pantomine quality. Which, in point of fact, it was.

Now, uncharacterisically, I have failed include a link to one of my novels and so I am forced to be more blatant than usual. Here is a link to The Head Gardener which I am making available to download for free in Ebook form during September.